what yogachara does through its detailed analysis of the nature of consciousness through its detailed analysis of the three natures that all phenomena enjoy and through its 00:34:28 detailed analysis of the three respects in which things are natureless gives us a nice analysis of how it is that we come to represent what is in fact dependently originated as um as 00:34:42 independent and intrinsically real and how it is that we come to see our mediated access to the world as immediate

there's a crucial distinction between what barney called three and four that's what uh captured me so 01:08:55 if you take the mind as fundamental as existing the only existing thing where where the the movie of the world is reflected into i am not happy 01:09:08 my my culture uh rejects then as a useless point of view to do science that's what but there is an alternative much more interesting and i find much more 01:09:21 deep in which which i read in a garage you know which is what uh barry seems to be is calling the fourth alternative in which the mind is not the fundamental thing in which everything is it's 01:09:32 reflected it's just one part of this uh uh uh interdependence now namely it's not the things that not intrinsic existence but mind has intrinsic existence that's not the 01:09:45 the the there's a more interesting answer namely that mind itself has no intrinsic uh uh existence uh and so it's just uh uh 01:09:57 it has an existence but is is it of course it's an existence my mind exists and i exist but uh and and and and if i think in terms of groups to say i mean all sentience being or all 01:10:10 human beings whatever um together uh which is an ideal also some some some some western philosophy that you know um it's collectively that through language and 01:10:22 that would create a vision of the world but i want to think of this as one aspect of the ensemble of things which is existence where uh uh nothing of that has um 01:10:36 uh has intrinsic existence so i want to think about my mind it's my brain my sensation my all my my my love people loving me the the image that people have of me my instead of the set 01:10:48 of processes uh uh which part of the world and it seems to me that the belgian allows me to think at me as part of the world at the same sense of the same ground as the world being 01:11:01 reflected in my consciousness without having to choose one of the two perspective to be the true one the intrinsic existence um 01:11:12 all all perspectives are uh uh empty they're all good but they are um they are not the the one on which the rest is ground they 01:11:24 each of one i can understand dependently on something else so marios you read a a verse or two from the third chapter of nagarjuna and uh let me comment on that

but before we do that let me talk about something that's even more fundamental um and helps us to understand the progression of thinking through those four schools to the what's 00:42:10 usually considered the most sophisticated in my jamaica school um and that is the distinction which is really important between existence and intrinsic existence 00:42:23 and the ex and the distinction between no existence and no intrinsic existence so this is these distinctions um if one doesn't fully comprehend the the 00:42:37 majamika system uh not fully comprehend but have some idea of the of the uh my jamaica system one then usually make is not able to make these distinctions so 00:42:49 let's talk about them for a moment um so existence um we when we talk about existence we talk about our ordinary understanding of what's real okay that things are 00:43:03 objects uh things are you know they may be in relationship but what's in relationship are two different distinct objects or entities that are in relationship and that's kind of our normal understanding of existence 00:43:15 so lacking inherent existence or intrinsic existence begs the issue to understand what is intrinsic existence okay and that's the 00:43:27 object of negation for the buddha for nagarjuna and for all those following in this tradition of nagarjuna the uh the majamika school and so 00:43:39 that's not so easy to wrap our heads around uh what is intrinsic existence in a way it's so close that we miss it you know it's it's a little bit like you know 00:43:51 staying in a in a new hotel room in a new city waking up and looking for your glasses and you can't find them and then realizing that they're already on your faces and so 00:44:05 intrinsic existence is things existing independently things existing uh through relationship um things not not things existing dependently not in independently 00:44:19 and so if we look at dependence now we can look at that at several levels and the more obvious levels you've mentioned that carlo is cause and effect causality okay but there are also more uh 00:44:33 subtle levels of dependence that the buddha and nagarjuna talk about and are real central to the philosophy so the second level is the relationship between whole and parts and parts to whole it 00:44:46 goes both ways okay that's a a a little bit you know another level if you will of of dependence uh in the particularly you know highlighted by nagarjuna and 00:44:58 then the third level which is the most uh subtle level the subtlest level which is really what we have to start to understand because the opposite of that is this independent or intrinsic 00:45:10 existence okay so this third level we call dependence through designation or sometimes called dependent designation but it's dependence through designation 00:45:22 it's a type of naming or labeling so for example barry we label or name barry my parents gave this name to barry based on a body 00:45:34 okay maybe a little tiny infant body at that time right and also uh in terms of maybe some kind of behaviors or you know how they thought this emotional structure is for this little baby right 00:45:47 he's very calm or he's very you know he's acts out a lot he's very active or you know all those things so upon all that a name is placed in this case barry okay 00:45:59 so that relationship of you know dependence through designation is really what nagarjuna is talking about when we talk about dependence um and so that's very uh 00:46:11 important to understand so the opposite of that coming back to understanding this inherent or intrinsic existence there are many words in english we use synonymous for 00:46:23 ranging not existing intrinsically or inherently or independently or from its own side those are all synonyms um to the tibetan 00:46:36 terminology that i just mentioned um so when people don't have a good appreciation for intrinsic existence and you say then so the second there were two comparisons 00:46:53 the second comparison is uh non-existence and not inherently existent so when when when when regarding says no inherent existence what often people interpret is no 00:47:07 existence at all and they fall into a nihilism that nothing exists at all so they haven't fully under appreciated this notion of um intrinsic existence so they're throwing the baby out with the 00:47:20 bathwater right when we're throwing out or negating uh intrinsic existence that they don't quite understand what that really means they think it's all of existence and therefore they you know think that nothing exists they throw the 00:47:33 baby out with a backlog so that's that's okay can i interject something before you go ahead and you you you promised us before uh the full schools before uh but but can i 00:47:44 can i make a comment here um of course about you to say because this is free flow so yeah yeah so we you know we gave the title uh 00:47:56 what is real to this uh to this i that seems to me um that's exactly that distinction that that you you made between existence 00:48:09 and intrinsic existence um inherent existence it's a it it's it's uh it's idea that that i found central and and and 00:48:22 essentially essentially useful for me for for the following reason first of all um i mean the notion of reality the notion of existence here are close i mean what what exists is what is real what is that i want to say a couple of things one is 00:48:40 that um we make a distinction with an illusory and real in our everyday life uh which it's well founded i mean if i if i see 00:48:53 the chair and there's a mirror there and i see a chair of the other side of the mirror there's a precise sense in which the chair in which the other side of the mirror is not real well this chair is real 00:49:06 um this distinction has a meaning because i can sit on the chair i can touch that one but i cannot sit on that and touch that one but 00:49:18 then we realize that some aspects of what is illusory in the chair in the mirror also are shared by the chair which i just called real which is also illusory in 00:49:31 some other sets um for instance uh the fact of being a chair uh it's uh cut out and back on so i missed you up until now please could you repeat it oh 00:49:44 uh for where for where did you be speak uh when you were saying this distinction between existence and inherent existence and non-existence non-inheritances is 00:49:56 very helpful uh and then after that i lost you yeah i wanted to um make a couple points one is that uh we use a distinction between illusory and real in everyday life for instance we say that 00:50:10 a chair but then i was saying of course then um through science uh we realized that there are illusory aspects in the chair which are just called real as well 00:50:30 but then one is tempted and that's um to say all right so there are many luxury aspects of that chair but there is a a more fundamental level in which uh 00:50:45 there is a description of what is going on there which is a real one and edinton uh made it very very vividly in a well-known uh distinction between the scientific table 00:50:57 and the everyday table when he says look i have two images two tables there there's a table of which i eat which is solid and then there's a table which i view with my scientific eyes which is made by atoms 00:51:09 uh and is not solid there's a lot of emptiness of of not emptiness negatives empty completely different sense i i've heard that that emptiness is 99.9 to the 12th 00:51:20 power based in the atom is that right yes yes but that's of course not negative emptiness that's just the lack of presence of atoms yeah um and adidas says and people use that 00:51:34 by saying the the the the chair of my uh the chairman which i see the solitude is illusory the real chair is the atoms uh this way of using the notion of real and the 00:51:49 notion of um of uh existence so what exists in the atoms uh is dangerously misleading that's what 00:52:01 i uh because uh it uh um it pushes us to try to resolve the relational and illusory aspect of reality that we see 00:52:15 in terms of some basic fundamental physical reality from which to derive it or in western subjective idealism 00:52:28 in terms and its derivation in terms of some sort of uh fundamental mind or fundamental subject which is a real existing entity 00:52:41 the cartesian mind that is certain of existing itself um or the kantian subject or even the the the fundamentality of the perception 00:52:53 itself in whosoever uh and in phenomenology so there is this western need to anchor um the uh what we mean by real or something final 00:53:07 so uh to to realize that there is dependence but then there is some basic grounds on which everything builds up on which to uh on which to sit and this is what i take emptiness 00:53:23 the notion of empty negative notion of emptiness to be useful uh to to get rid of this urge of finding beyond the uh 00:53:35 the illusory aspect of the world a a basic level which is not um uh real in in in the uh 00:53:47 in the sense of uh uh of of uh uh in which this chair is is real compared to the uh to the chair uh in the mirror but but really the fundamental way so the the the bottom line of the story the 00:54:02 the solid terrain on which to anchor the ultimate um uh uh the end point of the line of dependence the line of dependence ends to some point that's what is real 00:54:15 and and what is this nagarjuna is that that's the wrong question i mean uh it's not only that the chair the table is empty because i can understand it's something else but it's 00:54:26 also that something else is also empty because i can understand it's something else until the point in which there is this emptiness itself it's a it's empty because we shouldn't take it as a 00:54:40 as a fundamental sort of metaphysical principle on which to ground all the rest so this putting this this is yeah just putting this in slightly different 00:54:51 terminology emptiness is where it allows functionality emptiness is the lack of any kind of essence even on a you know atomic level and i agree with you what you said 00:55:04 that's i think very true um right and this is a look at when we look at the chair versus the reflection of the chair in the mirror it gets a little more complicated because both of them of course lack any 00:55:17 independent existence both okay they're both empty uh in terms of shunyata having said that the metaphor that the buddha used he gave about 10 different 00:55:29 metaphors for you know something to be illusory and one of the important ones that he used was reflection you know he used the reflection of the moon or the full moon in in the still 00:55:41 water that it looks like the moon but in fact of course it's not it's a reflection he used such things as water in a mirage sound of an echo and you know things 00:55:55 like that to illustrate okay now um let me mention two experiments if i may and you correct me where i'm wrong i'm a 00:56:07 pop physicist from the new york times okay um and one is the uh the thought experiment of ed edwin schroedinger okay the so-called shorting her cat paradox 00:56:21 or thought experiment and you have double steel box in which you have a cat there's no doors no windows right and you have a vial of very powerful acid that's 00:56:33 connected to a radioisotope the half-life of the isotope is the same duration as the duration of your experiment your thought experiment so the chance of the cat so if the radioactive material 00:56:46 decays 50 chance it you know somehow pulls a lever and the acid spills killing the cat if that radioisotope does not decay there's no spillage of the of the 00:56:59 of the acid and the cat remains alive so quantum physicists call this superposition where the cat is both alive and dead when you crack open this steel box 00:57:13 then um you observe what's inside and then the cat is either dead if the radio isotope you know decayed and knocked over the acid or 00:57:25 it's alive it didn't okay and it's it's either or whereas when you can't observe it it's both it's superposition okay second is the double slit you know you you shoot these electrons or photons you 00:57:40 know through two slits in a metal thing and then you have a screen behind and you look at the the pattern and if you have a little camera observation device at the slit level of the slits observing 00:57:52 you find a pattern below on the back on the screen that suggests what passed through the splits were particles whereas if you remove the observation device you have an interference pattern 00:58:05 suggesting what went through this list were waves okay so these two experiments at least in my very uh you know superficial understanding tell us that observer dependence is very 00:58:18 important in terms of reality okay that whether or not there is or isn't or or maybe you can what type of observer you know presence there is very much influences and determines what's real 00:58:31 and so that then uh jumps into the four you know buddhist schools of philosophy and if we go from the so-called least sophisticated up the third one would be the one you alluded to that's somewhat 00:58:45 similar to bishop barkley in the west and other idealists that say that everything is consciousness everything is mine and things that seem to be solid out there in an external reality are nothing more than projections of our 00:58:58 mind and that's actually a very sophisticated philosophy it's a very sophisticated philosophy one of the things it starts to do is it breaks down this notion of a solid external reality 00:59:10 okay but it's con it's it's critique as you have you also mentioned is that it takes the mind you know to be somehow you know uh absolute or ultimate you 00:59:22 know existing and so then the highest if you will most sophisticated school of mediumica says well what the chidoma modulus the mind-only school says that's correct up to a point but the criticism is 00:59:36 there's no uh you know absoluteness about the mind either so then you end up with that you accept an external reality you accept a mind but both you know that is every existent thing uh exists 00:59:49 without having any uh exist in relationship without having any independence or objectivity um and so that's very roughly the at least the the the last two of the three buddhist schools the 01:00:03 third one is divided again into prasannika madhyamaka and spatrontikamanjamaka using tibetan terms that are borrowing from the sanskrit um and the prasangika mud yamaka is considered the most 01:00:16 sophisticated where nothing at all has intrinsic existence the whereas the uh svaltronticom and yamaka they say that some uh conventional reality does exist uh 01:00:30 from its own side having some essence uh so there's a little bit of a distinction in the debate there um so just wanted to to mention those things i'd like you to comment